Tim Rogers + Ed Abbiati

Tim Rogers (born Timothy Adrian Rogers on 20 September 1969[citation needed]) is an Australian musician, actor and writer, best known as the frontman of Australian rock band You Am I. He has also recorded solo albums with backing bands. As of July 2013, Rogers has released 12 albums with You Am I and five solo albums.
Rogers formed You Am I with school friend Nick Tischler and older brother Jaimme Rogers in 1989. Although the line-up regularly changed during the band’s early period, Andy Kent and Mark Tunaley eventually settled on bass guitar and drums, respectively. Kent had previously been the band’s sound mixer before joining as a musician. After the recording of their debut album Sound As Ever Tunaley was asked to leave the band and Russell ‘Rusty’ Hopkinson joined. Second guitarist Davey Lane, initially part of The Twin Set touring band, joined in 1999.

Rogers released his first solo album What Rhymes With Cars And Girls in 1999 after his relocation to Melbourne. Rogers later provided a brief background for an album that was recorded over a three-week period on an eight-track digital recorder: “I had some time alone and I found myself writing some songs and then I just thought, well it looks like You Am I’s not going to be recording for a while, while we’re waiting for albums to come out overseas, so I wanna make a record…” Recorded at the home studio of Weddings Parties Anything band member Jen Anderson, the album mostly consists of country/folk-style songs, even though Rogers hesitated at the idea of a country sound. Rogers used the name The Twin Set for his backing band, as well as for the corresponding tour. He later won an ARIA award for Best Male Artist for the album. On 29 September 2007, Rogers released his fourth solo album The Luxury of Hysteria, the first album for which his name is the sole performing credit, although The Temperance Union performed on the album. Rogers also created his own record label, Ruby Q, to release the album.

Writing for The Age newspaper (Victoria, Australia), Michael Dwyer wrote in an October 2007 review:

Tim Rogers never sounded as lost as on this strange, beautiful album …. The first three songs are troubled inner monologues. A Quiet Night In and When Yer Sad infuse the act of being alone with Shakespearean gravity. Much of the rest is like personal correspondence, written late at night when feelings are raw and references obscure. There’s no mistaking the mood, though: regret and bewilderment bounce off each other like booze and smokes.

Australian music writer Ed Nimmervoll described The Luxury of Hysteria as: “Reflective, brutally honest and painful- but never self indulgent …”
Rogers, 2010

Ten years after the release of What Rhymes With Cars and Girls, Rogers, together with musicians from the original recording sessions, played several live performances in the Australian cities of Sydney and Melbourne during April 2009 for a limited tour that involved the album played live in its entirety. The concerts lacked Stuart Speed, the album’s bass guitarist, who had died. Anderson reflected upon the album’s significance prior to the commencement of the shows, “Moving to Melbourne for him [Rogers] was a fresh start. He didn’t choose to talk about it [the relationship] and I didn’t bring it up. It was a healing, moving on process for him. And it was best to leave it at that—let him work through what was going on in his life and introduce him to some new musical buddies in Melbourne.”

For Rogers’s fifth solo album, his second without a backing band, he signed with Four Four, an imprint of ABC Music. Entitled Rogers Sings Rogerstein, the album was released on 24 August 2012 and was produced by long-time collaborator Shane O’Mara. The album’s title refers to Shel Rogerstein, an American whom Rogers met on a train in Southern France. Rogers revealed in 2013 that Rogerstein does not appear on the Google search engine and is averse to touring. In the corresponding press release for the album’s launch, Rogers wrote, “Quite where the percentages lie in lyrical/musical contributions on this album is unclear … Shel claims he’s as baffled as to his contributions as I am to mine. Subjects are close to my bones, but as our lives within this loose ramble have become so confluent, quite who’s leaning on whose shoulder is unclear.”